January 30, 2019
St. Charles County, Missouri — To better understand the needs of the business community, the St. Charles County Department of Workforce & Business Development is offering local employers the opportunity to participate in an online survey regarding the soft skills of job applicants and existing staff. Soft skills are personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively with other people and include work ethic, team work, time management, problem solving and communication.
“In the last decade, regional employers have voiced ongoing concern that some job applicants and existing staff struggle with soft skills. This is evidenced by the results of the annual State of St. Louis Workforce Report conducted by St. Louis Community College and the State of Missouri,” says Scott J. Drachnik, Director of the St. Charles County Department of Workforce & Business Development and the Missouri Job Center of St. Charles County. “Our goal, through this local survey, is to better understand the soft skills training needs of employers in St. Charles County and to identify best practices of local employers who are actively training and mentoring their staff in the area of soft skills.”
The survey is being conducted by the St. Charles County Soft Skills Task Force, a sub-committee of the St. Charles County Workforce Development Board. Drachnik says the task force has listened to presentations and conducted research over the past year to learn how soft skills training is interwoven in K-12 education, trade schools, colleges and universities.
The task force has identified the need for employers of all sizes to emphasize the importance of soft skills and provide the ongoing tools and training at the work place to help people grow and improve where needed. Drachnik says regular life skills workshops and training are available through the Missouri Job Center of St. Charles County and others in the community, such as Connections to Success, but that, through the survey, the task force will be able to determine what other programs are needed.
Feedback from the survey will be used by the Job Center and its educational and business partners to shape workforce efforts in the community. The survey is available at: http://bit.ly/SCCSoftSkillsSurvey.
For more information about the Soft Skills Business Survey, contact the Missouri Job Center of St. Charles County at 636-255-6060.